The ICS Board of Trustees is delighted to announce that Kari Bø is the 2016 winner of the International Continence Society Lifetime Achievement Award. This award was created to honor an individual who has made a lifetime commitment and a lasting contribution to the advancement of science, education, clinical practice or public awareness in the field of continence.
Professor Kari Bø is currently the Elected Rector of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (2013-2017) Department of Sports Medicine, Oslo Norway. Professor Bø’s background is a physical therapist and exercise scientist and she is recognised throughout the world as an expert in pelvic floor function/dysfunction. She has been inspirational in the development of and providing the evidence base for conservative treatment of pelvic floor dysfunction, thus improving the quality of life of many patients.
In 1988 Professor Bø presented one of the first physiotherapy scientific papers at the ICS meeting in Oslo and has since presented over 250 lectures in all fomats and has over 270 peer reviewed publications. Professor Bø has also published many books and is the lead author of the very influential text ‘Evidence based physiotherapy for the pelvic floor- bridging science and clinical practice’ Elsevier 2007, and the revised 2nd edition. Within the ICS, Professor Bø has been active in many influential capacities, helping to raise the international and professional profile of the effectiveness of conservative therapies. She is a strong advocate of quality research and has been an elected member of the ICS Scientific Committee. She has been a member of the ICS Pelvic Floor Clinical Assessment Group and is currently the chair of the Standardization Working Group on Terminology in Conservative Management of Pelvic Floor Dysfunction. Professor Bø is a member of the Cochrane Group on Incontinence and has been a member of the first two International Consultations on Incontinence (conservative treatment). In 2011 Professor Bø was awarded an ICS Research Fellowship which facilitated a months’ placement at the Bristol Urological Institute. At the 2013 Barcelona ICS meeting Professor Bø was awarded the Conservative Management Award for the abstract ‘Effect of postpartum pelvic floor muscle training on urinary incontinence in primiparous women with and without major pelvic floor muscle defects. An assessor blinded randomized trial’.
In 2015 Professor Bø won the World Confederation for Physical Therapy (WCPT) Mildred Elson Award. The Mildred Elson Award is the highest honour that WCPT can bestow. It is for outstanding leadership contributing significantly to the development of physical therapy internationally. This year, Kari Bø was also awarded for her article “Single blind, randomized controlled trial of pelvic floor exercises, electrical stimulation, vaginal cones, and no treatment in management of genuine stress incontinence in women” (Bø BMJ 1999) as one of the 15 top trials among 28,000 articles in the PEDro database.
Kari Bø’s contribution to evidence-based practice in the field has had a major impact on the scientific community and on thousands of men and women with problems related to the pelvic floor through lecturing and awareness-raising for the public and media. Professor Bø has contributed greatly to the advancement of conservative management of pelvic floor dysfunction and it is certain she will continue to play a prominent role in future discoveries.
The Board will present this award to Kari at the Annual Meeting in Tokyo later this year.
With thanks to Doreen McClurg, chair of our Physiotherapy Committee - who assisted with this news article.
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